It was the dawn of the 22nd dynasty. In the delta region
of Lower Egypt, just southwest of Tanis on the River Nile, the capital city
of the nome of Am-Khent rose to prominence, becoming the royal residence of
Pharaoh Shoshenq I, and by extension, the power center of the ancient world.

This was Bubastis, the center of worship for the cat goddess Bast.
Within the greatest temple dwelt the Mau-im-dwo, what the Greek
settlers came to call the Oracle of Bast. Within the innermost
sanctum, the priests of Bast learned a language, the Mau-im-dwo, by which
they could speak with divine and mortal cats… assuming, of course, the cats
were in the mood.

Near the end of the 26th dynasty, a cat which called itself
Apekteina Pontiki condescended to explain the very complex and very specific
feline dogmas of right and wrong. The priests were utterly mystified.
The nuances that were so obvious to cats seemed, to them, nonsensical
contradictions: It was natural and permissible to kill a mouse, a bird, an
insect, and any other creature whose size and speed was such that it could
be killed. In some cases, it was permissible—and even laudable—to play
with one’s prey, prolonging its demise and torturing it with false hope. At
other times, this was the most grievous of sins. There was one set of
rules for morning, one for night, and none at all for midday, for nothing
that hunted under a high sun was fit to call itself a cat. There was
one rule if your belly was empty and another if it was full. There
were rules for the flooding season, for the season of planting and for the
harvest. Yet the priests could never understand which rules took
precedence. If your belly was full, but it was evening and during the
drought, but you were outdoors and the moon was waning, didn’t that mean you
were both required and forbidden to kill and ignore the mouse
in the doorway but not the lizard on the well?

Apekteina Pontiki looked on the befuddled priests of Bast, and she pitied
them. The word spread among the cats of the temple and then to the
ones beyond: the two-footed creatures were nice enough, but they could not
wrap their simple minds around the complexities of the Feline Way.
That same Feline Way that governed the torment of mice dictated that Man
could not be taunted with a wisdom he could never understand. With
heavy hearts, the cats resolved to spare him the frustration. As one,
they stopped acknowledging the language of Mau-im-dwo.

It took the priests a while to notice, for the cats often pretended not
to understand. You just had to wait for the right day and approach
them in just the right way… Then the Persians invaded, and the priests, like
the rest of Bubastis, had other things on their mind.

Two thousand years later, very little had changed. The woman who
was born Selina Kyle had so embraced her feline nature that she was, in
every way that mattered, a cat-woman. She too had a very complex and
very specific code of right and wrong. She didn’t care any more than
the cats of old that her rules were different from other people’s, nor that
they would never be able to grasp it if she tried to explain. She only
knew that her code worked for her: Her right was right, and she would keep
it. Her wrong was wrong, and she wouldn’t do it. So it was and
would ever be, meow and amen.

It was fine to live on the proceeds of her thefts; they were hers.
She had taken those paintings, jewels, statues, and other valuables.
She had bested Batman most of the time to get away. She had converted
the goods to cash through her own paw-selected fences, and she had the
proceeds safely tucked away in her Zurich accounts. Meow.

But to profit from Oswald Cobblepot’s crimes, that was another matter
entirely. That was just wrong.

Okay, Vault had temporarily replaced the Iceberg, she understood that.

She was the de facto “Oswald” of Vault, she accepted that, although
nobody quite understood it. (The fact that her old Cat-Tales
set was displayed behind the bar as part of the themed décor undoubtedly
figured in somehow, but even Batman was unable to reconstruct exactly how
the dominoes had fallen.)

Since Vault’s opening, everyone had apparently gone on paying the house
its cut of whatever they did on the premises. It was news to Selina
when she discovered it, but it certainly made sense: Gotham crooks were
creatures of habit, and if you were supposed to be paying off somebody,
it was better to be safe than very, very—HAHAHAHA! Closed casket due to the
death smile—sorry.

On the same death-avoidance premise, Sly had apparently been converting
all this ill-gotten gain into gems and gold bars, replacing the faux riches
of her old Cat-Tales set with the real thing.

It left her with a very tricky problem: what to do with it?

She had a sultan’s ransom of well-laundered riches on her hands.
Spiriting it off to Zurich to join the proceeds of her own crimes seemed
wrong, just plain wrong. Leaving it for Oswald, on the other hand,
went beyond wrong into criminally negligent homicide. With a
war chest like that, Oswald could wipe out the other mobs, tearing up half
the city in the process and creating ten kinds of hell for Batman. He
could also postpone that intermediary step and go after Batman immediately.

There were other scenarios, other variations, and each one ended with
either Batman, the entire city, or both placed in very serious danger.
She couldn’t just sit back and let it happen.

Somehow, she had to make all those riches go away.

Still raining. It was no “dark and stormy night” of cliché-bound
fiction, it was a cold, persistent drizzle. In daylight, it might be
called a Hawaiian blessing. At night, in the open hours after Batman’s
early patrol, it was just a nuisance. It was just cold enough and just
wet enough for just long enough that most perps didn’t bother. The
psychopaths didn’t care about such things, of course, but psychopaths
generally didn’t start the day at two o’clock in the morning.

It was a dark and boring night. All Batman had to show for
his early patrol was the Plymouth townhouse, and he’d been entirely
superfluous there. He had seen two police units pulling up to the
building and the officers rushing out with their guns drawn. He
ascertained from the police band that they were responding to a 10-10, shots
fired, and he stood by to assist… but the lead officer had already entered
the townhouse and found what is euphemistically called “a domestic
disturbance” in progress. He had disarmed the wife before Batman could
fire a line, and by the time Batman reached the street, a stretcher was
emerging from the front door. It was the husband being carried to the
waiting ambulance… not much blood… a superficial wound to the upper calf…
One of the senior patrolmen sneeringly suggested that Batman could make
himself useful giving the ambulance an escort to the hospital.

It was a dark and boring and frustrating night. The rain was
getting heavier. There was no logical reason not to make an early
night of it. He could start the late patrol at once and make it a
quick one, go home early and... Hell, there wasn’t much reason even to
do that. If he skipped the second patrol entirely, would Gotham even
care?

Except he didn’t WANT to go home early. He wanted action.
He wanted to fulfill his purpose. He wanted… apparently he wanted to
stop crimes that were not happening at the moment, and he couldn’t
quite bring himself to wish a crime into being just so he could smack the
perpetrator around.

A dark, boring, and infuriating night.

Until…

Amber lights. Blinking.

He spotted dim, amber lights blinking on and off in the lobby of an old
office building. That meant an alarm had been tripped, but there
weren’t any police or fire responding. It looked like an older
building, not one with a phalanx of on-site security guards. It was
even possible the lights were part of some antiquated alarm that was no
longer programmed to call in an alert. Batman swung down to the street
to investigate.

There was a time when Gotham National Bank would launder illicit funds,
as much as you wanted and as fast as you needed. With the cover of a
legitimate bank servicing the biggest corporations in the city, they could
handle greater sums than any other operation before or since.

Of course, it was that same corporate cover that proved their undoing
once Wayne Enterprises got involved. Selina didn’t know it at the
time, but looking back now… yep, once you knew Bruce Wayne was Batman, the
speed with which he acted was just astonishing. From the point where
he would have learned what they really were to the point where he shut them
down, it just—reowrl—boggled the mind. He really was the best.

Which was, unfortunately, beside the point. GNB was no longer a
money-laundering institution… and for that matter, Selina didn’t really need
the money laundered. Sly had done that on his own. It was
cleaned, pressed, folded neatly, and stored away in her old Cat-Tales set.
She didn’t need it laundered. She needed it GONE.

Liberty One Insurance had gone bankrupt in the early 1970s. The
building that had once been their corporate headquarters was now rented to a
dance studio, a community center, a political action group, and a
telemarketing firm. None had anything of particular value: a few
computers in the PAC office, a boom box and CDs in the dance studio, basket
balls in the community center. Not much to interest burglars, and the
groups’ presence brought enough activity to the building to discourage
squatters and undesirables from moving into the vacant floors. The
original locks were thought sufficient to protect what little was there, and
it took Batman all of ten seconds to demagnetize them and gain access to the
lobby.

His cape dripped on the highly polished floor, and his boots made a
rubbery squelch that echoed eerily. There was a cavernous emptiness to
the place, and the blinking security lights gave off a soft, eerie echo of
their own as they clicked on and off. That lifeless heartbeat was
disquieting enough on its own, but the blinking lights also made it harder
for Batman’s eyes to adjust… It was brighter. It was dimmer.
It was brighter. It was dimmer… A poorly designed system,
considering its purpose.

Batman made his way to the elevators at the far end of the lobby.
There were only two, probably considered plenty when the place was built.
There were only eight or ten floors, after all. Batman moved beyond
these to the stairwell, then turned back sharply—was that a noise? A
fluctuation in the rhythmic echo in the lobby? Or just a
crimefighter’s instinct that something was wrong?

He quickly returned to the lobby, senses quivering with that vague
feeling of… wrong. Something here was wrong. Something
was not what it should be. And his senses strained to find what it…
was.

Batman swallowed hard as the image registered.

“Lenses engage,” he graveled, looking up at… at… how could he have missed
this?

He was looking up at a giant coin set in a perfectly recessed niche
behind the reception desk. A Liberty head silver dollar, with a
positive trench carved deep and savagely across her cheek.

The image glowed brighter and dimmer as the amber lights flicked on and
off.

Brighter… and dimmer…

There was no mistaking that image.

Brighter… and dimmer…

Two-Face’s coin.

Brighter and…

Something else there is no mistaking: the grinding clack of the safety on
a double-barreled shotgun clicking off behind your head.

…dimmer…

Batman dropped and rolled as the first shot of two whizzed past his cowl.
He redirected his momentum as soon as he hit the floor to avoid rolling into
the path of the second. He regained his feet as his only half-glimpsed
assailant snapped the barrels closed on two fresh shells, and Batman raced
towards the stairwell just ahead of the next shots. He needed the
vertical plane more than the cover. As soon as he could swing UP, he
could fire a batarang at his assailant’s hands from a safe angle. The
last thing you wanted was to dislodge a shotgun on-level and risk—

It was the last conscious thought Batman had before the grapnel pierced
some kind of tank suspended above him in the stairwell, between the railings
of the second floor stairs. A shower of oily petroleum ooze rained
down on him while he was still in motion, but with the grapnel ascent
stymied and the assailant’s footsteps closing in behind him, Batman could
only shift his momentum, trying to regain his footing with nowhere to really
go. He shifted his balance towards the stairs—but kept going in a
twisting skid he could barely control. He found himself turning, which
would at least allow him to face his attacker coming through the doorway, a
surprise assault—

Except his feet kept turning on the hopelessly slicked surface,
and before he could counter, his balance was gone and his legs were
airborne.

Batman lay sprawled on his back and flailing in the oil when the looming
figure stepped into the doorway, silhouetted in the rhythmic amber flicker,
brighter then dimmer… brighter then dimmer…

Two-Face.

“We wanted to go the extra mile, Sport, seeing as it’s been two
long.”

Then the butt of the shotgun came crashing down on his skull.

Once upon a time, Catwoman came across a dockside warehouse full of cash.
Back then, theme criminals were few and far between, and Batman’s war on
crime was principally a war on organized crime. He’d shut down
every means Carmine Falcone had to launder his illegal income, forcing him
to stockpile it like so many pre-printed t-shirts advertising a cancelled
concert tour.

A warehouse full of cash, stacked in bundles of bundled bundles: some
long and low, like the tables in a dining hall; some tall, at least the
height of a man; and some towering more than thirty feet high. Just
how much was there, Catwoman couldn’t guess. Ten million?
Twenty? Thirty?

Selina Kyle had not become Catwoman out of greed. There was nothing
to tempt her in a warehouse of untraceable cash. There was no style in
such a theft. No challenge, no romance, and no triumph. And
nothing to feed the empty place that moved her to steal in the first place.

But there is one appetite that all cats share: mischief. If the
money had no value as currency, it was beyond price in its mischief-making
potential. What on earth would Batman make of it if she brought him
such a prize? Carmine Falcone would be none too happy, and that would
be fun too. But it was the Batman side of the equation that Catwoman
found irresistible.

She arranged for him to spot her… chase her… catch her… and be terribly
manly in all his terrifying crimefighter intensity once he had her pinned.

Then, she oh, so sweetly purred her secret into his ear: of course, she
had allowed him to find her, she had much to tell.

It was delicious. Beyond words, beyond thought, beyond a pulsing
tingle between her legs… all that intensity, the purest essence of Batman
turned in on itself because of her. He was flummoxed, utterly
flummoxed, the thoughts racing and twisting behind those fiery eyes, burning
to find the answer… all because of her. All hers. All that
essence of pure, mainline Batman, hers. What a rush. No
mere money could buy that.

Batman… because of her… meow.

He was trying so hard to hide that inferno of bewilderment raging
in his mind, he had no mental resources left to hide what he usually tried
to hide. While she played lightly with words, drawing whimsical
distinctions between “helping” and “being helpful,” his tongue had slipped
ever so briefly between his lips, and his index finger slid lightly against
his thumb while his eyes were riveted on her breasts.

Meow. Worth every dollar of the ten or twenty million. Meow.
Meow. Meow.

What actually became of the money, she never really cared.
Several years later, Harvey told her that, back when he was D.A., he had
gone with Batman to a warehouse full of Falcone cash. He said the two
of them doused it with gasoline and burned it to ash. She and Harvey
been swapping tall tales all night and she never quite believed the story,
but still…

Tipping Batman to the Vault treasure didn’t seem like a hot idea.

Batman awoke chained in a spread eagle position over the X on the Liberty
head coin.

“Two pounds of C4,” Two-Face explained (unnecessarily), pointing to a
canister beneath Batman’s feet. “Double blasting cap, naturally.”
He indicated this, flicking it lightly with his thumb and middle finger.
“And of course, you will have two minutes,” he said, setting the timer.

“And twenty-two seconds,” Batman said grimly.

Two-Face considered this, unable to refute the logic, and added
twenty-two seconds to the timer. Batman strained to get a better look
at the figure’s features, but his angle was too high. The unscarred
side certainly seemed to have Harvey Dent’s hair, but so did a quarter of
the men in Gotham.

He risked a direct question:

“Harvey, is that really you?”

“We’ve no time for chit-chat, Batman. We have a great deal of
missed coin flips to make up for. Why, in the time since we last saw
each other, we have come up with no fewer than eighteen ways to kill you,
this being the best of the lot.”

He clicked the timer, set it down, and walked across the lobby.
When he reached the door, he paused. He took out a coin, flipped it,
and turned back to Batman as he said:

“To be scrupulously honest, Bats, we came up with nineteen ways to
kill you. But as a matter of principle, we have chosen to ignore the
last, rather like lopping off the high score from the East German judge.”

With that he winked—a markedly Harvey “the Dentmeister” wink—and left.

Giving the money away, while obvious, was problematic.

First and foremost, it had a distinct whiff of remorse. The
cat’s sense of smell is highly developed, and the thought of Catwoman
prowling around the city, breaking into penthouses she had once burgled in
order to leave a gold bar or a diamond tiara when she had previously
relieved them of a Chagall, that had a very definite odor, the odor of a
tabloid’s crimefighter making up for past wrongs. No.

Charities were problematic too. While she had nothing against
orphans, she wouldn’t want to give money to an orphanage and appear to
validate those demeaning lies about her origins. For the same reason,
any kind of city sponsored help-the-poor projects would have to exclude the
East End. Talk about the stench of the Gotham Post!

An experienced escape artist could have freed himself from the coin
shackles in two minutes, leaving him scant seconds to run from the blast.
But Batman had settings in Zogger to prepare for just this kind of
situation. He was free in under sixty seconds, leaving him ample time
to stop the timer and disconnect the detonator.

Only then did he allow himself to breathe a sigh of relief, and only then
did he consider the contracting knot in his stomach as the implication sunk
in.

Was it Harvey?

He had only seen the face twice—and he winced at that irony—and also at
the growing throbbing under his cowl. The latter was from the blow
from the shotgun. What had been only a dull ache, not worth
considering in the face of an imminent explosion, was now coming to the
forefront. Bitterly, Batman reflected that, even though he’d lost
consciousness on the initial hit, Two-Face had undoubtedly struck him a
second time.

He summoned the Batmobile remotely and croaked “home” once he was behind
the wheel, the headache and growing nausea making it impossible to drive.
It was a concussion, no doubt of it, and if his vision blurred while he was
trying to drive… He even considered stopping at Leslie’s clinic; it was
closer than home.

Was it Harvey?

He had only seen the face twice: in the split second before the shotgun
came crashing down on his head, and when Two-Face was clear across the lobby
and turned back with that crack about the East German judge. Neither
was enough for a positive identification. It looked like Harvey,
yes—or at least, there was nothing that jumped out at him in those scant
seconds that absolutely ruled out the possibility of its being Harvey.
That was not enough for a positive identification, even from Batman.

Of course, he had heard a lot more of the voice, and that definitely
sounded like the Two-Face of old. But voices were tricky.
Azrael could simulate the Bat-gravel so well, he had once fooled
Commissioner Gordon.

Was it Harvey?

Batman trusted his judgment. As much as any man alive, he trusted
his eyes, and he trusted his mind, and he knew how the one could lie to the
other. He wanted it to be someone other than Harvey Dent; he
was perfectly aware of that bias. Wanting could make the eyes lie, and
wanting could make the mind refuse to see what the eyes were showing it.
But that was not happening here.

Bruce was not ready to say that the man he had seen was Harvey, not
because he didn’t want it to be Harvey, but because what little he saw was
not enough to be certain… and he had just made his headache ten times worse.
These circular thoughts hurt more than the blow from the shotgun.

Giving to the arts was a possibility.

When she was actively stealing, Selina thought nothing of
supporting the opera, the ballet, and even the museum’s acquisition fund.
There was nothing to prove back then. Big donations brought
invitations to the big fundraisers, access to the dowagers and their diamond
necklaces, and it put more and better paintings on the walls of the Gotham
museums… It was self-interested altruism for the thinking cat burglar,
meow.

But now it was tricky for the same reason breaking into random penthouses
and leaving gold bars on their pillows was tricky: that vague hint of
remorse. She had used the symphony and opera galas as hunting grounds,
and she’d taken so much from the museums over the years, it might seem like
she was making restitution.

Environmental causes came perilously close to using the money for the
Catitat, and that was just like mingling it with the proceeds of her own
thefts, pocketing Oswald’s money for herself. No. You don’t mix
the bounty from Catwoman’s thefts, the product of feline cunning, grace, and
panache, with the payoffs from any Dick, Harry, or Tomcat that schlep
through Vault with the proceeds of their brainless strongarm robberies.
It wasn’t done. It would be like hanging Dogs Playing Poker in Bruce’s
penthouse between a Picasso and a Cezanne.

That left diseases, and that required some serious investigation into
what research was most deserving and most in need of funding. The
problem there was that the Wayne Foundation had already done that
investigating and did it better than she could hope to. The simplest
method, by far, was to turn the money over to the Wayne Foundation to use it
where it would do the most good.

Except Bruce would have an aneurysm.

The Batmobile returning home on autopilot always set off an alert as it
crossed electric eye omega. The alert sounded discreetly in Alfred’s
room, and he hurried to the Batcave. He would normally open a com
channel to the Batmobile to ascertain if the master was conscious, but in
this case it was unnecessary, since the car was already pulling into its
hangar. The hatch opened as soon as it reached a full stop, and Master
Bruce got out on his own power.

“Concussion. Nothing serious,” he said.

Alfred glared, relief battling with preemptive frustration. Of all
the injuries he’d treated in his years as Batman’s personal medic, there was
none where the patient was so difficult and quarrelsome.

“The former diagnosis I accept, sir, as you were undoubtedly in a
position to know. The latter is for me to determine after a thorough
examination.”

“Fine. After the lo—” Batman started to argue.

“Now, Master Bruce. The logs will wait.”

Bruce had long ago accepted the futility of I’m-Batman declarations with
Alfred. The man who said “now” when it was a skinned knee or a
bee sting could say it still, and the duty logs, the Mad Hatter’s escape
from Arkham, or the Justice League’s assault on the Ice Reefs of Symbia 8
were relegated to the same “When I say you can and not before” status as a
game of stick ball when Bruce was ten. He removed his cowl and headed
for the med lab, muttering his gratitude that at least Alfred didn’t wake
Selina before coming down to the cave.

Explanations followed while Alfred checked his reflexes, looked for any
bleeding or bruising, checked for related neck injuries, and finally,
applied ice. By the time he was ready to declare Master Bruce free of skull
fractures or brain injuries, Bruce had finished the chronicle of his
Two-Face encounter.

“Of course, it wasn’t Harvey,” he pronounced at the end of the tale.
He was thinking much clearer now, and he could see how his earlier musings
had been colored by the shock of seeing any Two-Face, and also by the
physical pain of the concussion.

“Indeed, sir?”

It was said without much inflection, but Bruce detected a note of
skepticism. He knew the tone as well as he had known that ‘the logs
will wait’ tenor only moments before. Alfred had found a few lapses in
Bruce’s logic and would proceed to play devil’s advocate until those lapses
were addressed. Bruce unpacked his thesis:

“For one thing, Harvey’s Two-Face would have taken my utility belt while
I was unconscious. Any experienced rogue knows I’ve got a dozen tools
in there to help get out of whatever it is they’ve put me into. To let
me keep it is an amateur mistake.”

“Or one betraying a subconscious desire to help you escape, sir.
There was an episode with Miss Se– with Catwoman, that is. I seem to
recall your expounding at great length on the significance of her leaving
you in possession of the belt when she surely knew it guaranteed your
swift—”

“Alfred, really. That is not the point.”

“It is not a parallel case, sir, I agree. I merely remind
you of it in order to illustrate a certain flaw in your reasoning.
There are a number of reasons this Two-Face may have left you the belt, one
of which is not inconsistent with his being Harvey Dent. Mr. Dent’s
good half would surely not desire your death.”

Bruce grimaced. He had opened up to Alfred in much the same way he
would have related the incident in the logs—the difference being, the logs
did not argue.

“Maybe on its own the belt isn’t that significant, Alfred, but there is
more evidence to consider. The blow came from the right,” he said,
indicating the lump on his left temple. “When Harvey was Face, he
always swung from the Face-side, the left.”

“Master Bruce, really. Having spent the last thirty minutes
examining the injury in question, I must inform you that the direction in
which it was struck can only be described as down. To use any
other word merely perverts the language. I fear you must consider,
sir, that a significant amount of wishful thinking is presently tainting
your analysis.”

“You’re wrong. As a detective and man of logic, I have to admit
that the possibility exists that it could be Harvey. Simplest
explanation, Ockham's razor, and all that.”

“I sense a ‘but’ awaiting expression, sir.”

“But, the only reason to even consider that Two-Face might be
Harvey is because he was Two-Face before.”

“Yes, sir,” Alfred said emphatically. “The fact that Harvey Dent
was Two-Face, and is, in fact, the only person who has ever been Two-Face,
would seem to be a powerful argument.”

“An argument isn’t evidence, Alfred. And that argument in
particular loses weight given the other copycat psychopaths I’ve gone up
against over the years.”

Bruce sighed lightly as his demeanor softened. “Besides, Harvey was
doing so well. Why on Earth would he—”

“Begging your pardon, Master Bruce, but how would you know how Mister
Dent is doing? How long has it been since you've even spoken with
him?”

Bruce grunted.

“And even so,” Alfred continued, “how the gentleman ‘is doing’ is a
subjective matter, at best, whereas the dictates of logic and deduction
would appear to call for objective and quantifiable evidence. Should I
perhaps arrange a meeting with him, sir? Invite him back out to the
manor for brunch?”

“That would certainly settle it one way or the other,” Bruce murmured,
rubbing his head wearily. “Either he shows up with one face, or he
doesn't.”

It’s not like she’d be asking him to launder dirty money. She
didn’t want it back, she just wanted it to go off into the world where she
wouldn’t have to worry about Oswald using it to buy a fleet of urban assault
vehicles…

“Oh, you’re still up.”

Selina froze, finger poised on the corner of the book she wasn’t reading
as she once might have done on the edge of a rooftop skylight. As on
that long ago rooftop, she responded to the disapproving gravel without
turning to look at him.

“You make it sound like ‘those jewels don’t belong to you.’ In
fact, I can think of at least four ‘those jewels don’t belong to me’ and
three ‘the museum closed five hours ago’ when you sounded happier to see me
than you did just now. Guess I don’t have to ask how your night went.”

“It’s not you,” Bruce said, peeling off the kimono before getting into
bed. “There’s a… Alfred is making a call for me. He’s going to
make a call. It’s a little too early. Nothing to do for a few
hours until he can make the call…”

“Did you hit your head?”

“I didn’t hit my head. Someone else hit my head, hard
and repeatedly. I didn’t want to go into that with you until I heard
from Alfred.”

“Ah. So grumbly disapproving battitude is because I’m awake before
you’re ready for me. At least that’s settled. I don’t mind being
the cause of that look on your face, but when I am, I like to know why.”

“And to have done it on purpose,” he noted with a lip twitch as he
reached to turn out the light.

They dozed… although Bruce’s dreams were plagued with double images and
distorted reflections. The foppish playboy blundered over rooftops,
and Psychobat tore up a cocktail party at the Knickerbocker Club. When
the dream turned to Crime Alley, it was coins that fell to the pavement
instead of pearls, and when he woke, he was clutching Selina’s wrist the way
Batman did when her teasing had gone too far.

Luckily, she was asleep and didn’t know. He placed her hand
gingerly back on the bedsheets, and stared at the ceiling until the faint
yellow-white glow appeared at the top of the curtains. Selina woke and
stretched, and after the requisite good mornings, he cleared his throat.

“Have you, um, talked to Harvey recently?” he asked, introducing the
subject as casually as possible without drifting into the fop.

Selina shook her head.

“No, but I was just thinking about him a few nights ago. Funny you
mention it… oh, of course, you probably thought of it for the same reason.
Tuesday the 22nd. The gang at Vault were all ‘remembering’
him. It was a little off-putting, actually, they way they were
carrying on. It was practically a wake.”

“Understandable. From their point of view, he is essentially… eh,
dead. I can see where that would be… uh, disconcerting for you.”

Selina scowled. He’d begun the statement with clinical detachment,
the crimefighter expounding on the Rogue mindset he knew so well.
Then, halfway through, he glanced up at her and segued into a very
un-Batmanlike shilly-shallying.

“Disconcerting to me specifically, you mean.”

“Yes, to you.”

“Because if Two-Face is dead because Harvey reformed, then, technically,
I think Catwoman is a vampire.”

Bruce stared as he always had in the face of feline logic, phrases like
“those jewels don’t belong to you” and “the museum is closed” as useless now
as they had always been.

“Not to change the subject, Handsome, but do you remember back when the
world was young when I gave you a heads up on that warehouse full of mob
cash?”

Bruce raised a slow, suspicious eyebrow before he said “Yes.”

“Good,” Selina continued with gusto. “Harvey told me a story once;
it can't possibly be true, but... You didn’t, eh, burn it up, did you?”

“Of course,” he said instantly. “While you supposedly get to a
normal man’s heart through his stomach, to get to a man like Carmine
Falcone, you go through the wallet.”

“Now don't you start reminiscing like he's dead, too. We’ll invite
him for brunch and catch up this weekend…”

While Selina was drawing a mental line through the idea of telling Batman
about her Vault riches, Alfred came in with the breakfast tray. He and
Bruce exchanged looks, and then Alfred mentioned casually that he had tried
several times but received no answer. He would keep trying.

“Damn,” Bruce said. It sounded exactly like Selina’s “Fuck” a
moment before, and she knew it meant the same thing: a plan being
overturned.

“This isn’t a casual talk we’ve been having,” she said when Alfred had
left the room. “Something’s up your nose about Harvey.”

“It’s… it’s nothing. It’s the concussion. There are
just some things I need to check out.”

“Check out about Harvey? And what does that have to do with your
concussion?”

“No, not with Harvey. It’s… I mean... the concussion is
making it hard to focus. I’ve got about 22 things rummaging around in
my brain at the moment and—”